CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The city of Charlotte was just maturing into a glossy, multiethnic metropolis when Dora Martinez moved here from Mexico nearly three decades ago.
She watched as the city’s banking industry, the country’s second-largest behind New York, created a boom for construction workers, many of them in the country illegally, and transformed Charlotte into a haven for immigrants, especially from Latin America.
Now she looked out at her sliver of East Charlotte, a walkable immigrant enclave, and saw it devoid of foot traffic. She had seen the masked men in paramilitary uniforms zooming past her house in black SUVs and had decided not to venture out for groceries or for shifts at a nearby laundromat. But she allowed herself a few moments of fresh air at dusk to hide from agents of “la migra” — slang for the Border Patrol — searching for people like her, without permanent legal status…